Ryuu stood, smiling. "I'm happy to see that not everyone in this house rises with the sun. Please, join us." He pointed to an empty kitchen chair.
Amelia hung her coat on the back of the chair and sat down. Ryuu glided over to the cabinet and pulled down another cup and saucer. He placed them in front of her and sat down again. Rheia poured her a cup of what looked and smelled like jasmine green tea.
"The aroma is lovely." Amelia added five teaspoons of sugar and stirred lightly.
"I don't know how you or Meryn have any teeth left. You both drink your sugar with a bit of tea." Rheia shook her head.
"I need the sugar this morning. I usually rise with the sun, as Ryuu put it, but woke up this morning after a nightmare feeling completely out of sorts," she confessed.
"Is there anything we can do to help?" Ryuu asked.
Amelia shook her head. "It's something I need to work out. The tea is helping, I feel calmer already."
Smiling, Ryuu and Rheia shared a look.
Amelia frowned. "What?"
Rheia apologized quickly. "I'm sorry. Let me explain. This is my mother's tea service. Whenever I needed a pick-me-up, she would use this set, and it seemed like my worries would just float away."
"Is it okay for me to use?" Amelia asked, worried she had blundered in where she didn't belong.
Rheia laughed. "Of course, it's okay. In fact, maybe my mother is looking out for the both of us this morning."
"Why do you need its calming effects?" Amelia asked.
"I'm worried about having this baby; it's my first. Like Meryn, I'm human having a shifter baby. I have heard that sometimes human women can have issues delivering." Rheia sat back in her chair.
Amelia frowned. She was confused. She could have sworn she met Rheia's daughter the night before. "But Penny..."
"Penny is my adopted daughter. Even though I didn't give birth to her, she couldn't be more like me if we tried. So, even though I'm already a mother, I've never actually experienced giving birth. I bet it's much different being the one pushing than telling someone to push."
"I think you'll be fine, at least you know what to expect. You're not going into it wide eyed with expectations of a twenty minute delivery before holding your perfect baby, hair and makeup still looking great."
"You're right, but I think it's a double-edged sword. I also know everything that can go wrong." Rheia stared into her cup, a frown pulling her eyebrows together in worry.
Amelia knew no matter what she said, Rheia would continue to fret until her baby was safe in her arms, so she decided to change the subject to something happier.
"So are you decorating in Star Wars and Doctor Who, too?" Amelia joked.
Rheia's face brightened and she laughed. "God, no. Colton and I decided on a baby wolf theme. Evidently, it's very popular here in Lycaonia at the moment due to a suggestion Meryn made to another pregnant woman a couple months ago. A lot of shops in the city started creating different shifter-themed items. We chose wolf, not only because my baby will be half wolf shifter, but we're also including Penny in the decorations. The baby's nursery will have a mural of Colton and Penny in their shifted forms painted on one of the walls."
"That sounds perfect! My brothers are the ones that raised me, so they did the decorating when it came to my own nursery. Since they couldn't decide on a single theme, they decided that they would each decorate one wall, leaving the wall with the door blank to keep things even." She took a sip of her tea and continued. "Caiden chose dragons since he had mastered the element of air, but they weren't cute cartoon dragons; they were realistic ones with long fangs and bodies."
"Oh no!" Rheia covered mouth to hide her smile.
Amelia held up her hand. "It gets better. Kyran had mastered water so he had sharks painted on his wall. Finally, Tristan chose an erupting volcano for his wall, since he had mastered fire."
By this time, Rheia had given in to her giggles, and even Ryuu was smiling.
"I wasn't able to redecorate that room until I was thirteen! But on the bright side, not much scares me as an adult." She shrugged.
"Where were your parents?" Ryuu asked.
"After I was born, my mother realized she wasn't the maternal type. She wanted to be a free spirit, untethered by earthly shackles." Amelia made air quotes around free spirit and earthly shackles.
"Then why have a child?" Rheia asked.
"Because my father wanted another one. When I was born, he handed me off to Caiden, and he and my mother left on a free love adventure. My nature loving, bell bottoms-wearing mother turned my high-born, ruling-house father into a nomadic hippie, although I think he fakes it because he loves her. He still makes them stay in five star hotels after their 'sojourns' into the woods."
"So Lady Ironwood is a free spirit?" Ryuu asked, rotating his mug.
Amelia shook her head. "My mother is also quite the feminist, she kept her maiden name much to the utter shock and dismay of my father, so it's not Lady Ironwood; it's Lady Camden."
"She sounds fascinating." Rheia said, setting her cup down.
"Indeed," Ryuu murmured.
"She's something else, I'll tell you that. I don't know how many times I thanked the Goddess that my brothers raised me, nightmare walls and all. During one of her visits, my mother took me on a nature hike. She made me sit crossed-legged in the woods for hours, trying to hear the voices of the spirits. I couldn't have been more than four or five at the time. When Caiden found us, I was hungry, crying, and covered in mosquito bites." Amelia shuddered thinking of how her life might have been if her parents had stayed home all the time to raise her.